From the Desk of Brandon Haynes

Introducing Our Second Harvest Virtual Food Drive

I recently had the privilege of teaming up with some fellow Harvard University graduate students to support a national food-and-fund drive to benefit the Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties.

This Second Harvest organization was a perfect choice as it is highly efficient, reputable, and provides critical food support year-round for those in need. Moreover, Second Harvest has an unsurpassed dollar-for-deed ratio: 95% of every tax-deductible dollar donated will directly feed families and individuals in dire need of assistance. In this way, contributions will make a powerful difference!

Second Harvest: Built on DotNetNuke

Equally important for many readers of this blog, this Second Harvest organization utilizes DotNetNuke as a platform for donations, food drives, and in communicating its important mission. It is especially fulfilling for me personally to be a part of an open-source platform that is utilized to help those in need, and I am confident that anyone who has ever contributed to or supported the DotNetNuke ecosystem in any way feels the same.

Second Harvest of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties is a fantastic example of a great charitable model combined with some excellent technology choices. Any charity that is able to return 95% of its contributions to those it is trying to help easily meets this bar, and Second Harvest leverages DotNetNuke to accept donations in a meaningful way from contributors around the country.

Please Consider Supporting Second Harvest

Throughout 2009, I have contributed a number of software projects to the public domain (including Amazon S3 integration, Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL model adapters, multi-factor authentication, a mega-menu provider, et cetera). If you have found any of those projects beneficial, or otherwise feel a need to help those in need, please consider making a contribution.

Nothing else matters when you’re hungry. Give a gift that matters at this critical time. If your cupboards are full, please help others who don’t know where their next meal will come from. No donation is too small; giving as little as $10 is enough to provide 20 people with the most basic human need: food.

This is a great opportunity to ensure that children, families, and seniors don’t go hungry.

Please join us in this effort to assist the less fortunate who have to decide between paying for rent, utilities, or medicine and providing food for their loved ones.

Donations may be made via the Second Harvest website.

(more…)

Please bear with me while I move content from my previous blog site, located at brandonhaynes.org.  Content and links may be of inconsistent quality until such a time as I have fully reconstituted the site.

B

It’s pleasant to stumble upon something so refreshingly novel.  And though I am typically loathe to suggest ANY websites to others, I nonetheless highly recommend taking a look.